Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020complete | Page 461

Greater Bay Area
Shanghai Singapore International School, Gosain, Shimona - 12
10/26/2058
Tomorrow is the day I have to leave my parents. I have to leave my home to go live in the Greater Bay
Area. I have to live away from my parents and can only see them once a year. They can only talk to us on
Sundays. They say it’s for our future, but it feels like I am going to jail. I feel like I want to rebel but there’s
nothing my parents can do, it’s the new law; no one under 20 is allowed to live in Shanghai.
A few years ago, the government started working on this place called The Greater Bay Area and they
have built it for my generation. It is supposed to help us turn into great leaders for the world’s future. Sending
such young children to survive in a stimulated area where we live on water, and go to school in the sky sounds
pretty cool but it seems sketchy to me. The government made the area for just us kids to live there. The place
has rules but no adults so a lot of the teenagers think it is okay to break them. But the Greater Bay Area has
hidden cameras everywhere.
10/27/2058
I finish packing my bags and get ready to leave my house. I meet up with my friend Michael to go to
the train station, where the new stop, The Greater Bay Area, is. I get in the MRT and it goes in a different
direction than the other trains. It zooms past Shanghai and within an hour, we have arrived. I get out of the
metro station and suddenly, it feels like I am on a different planet. There is very little land and all I see is blue
shimmering waters beyond. The adults that are there for the first week guide us to the boat to take us to our
assigned villas.
I reach the house and get into my room. I open the balcony to see the view. The sun reflects on the
water while I see some people already swimming in the ocean. I look up to see a whole city above ground. I
couldn’t wait to see it the next day, but also instantly felt homesick. I wake up the next day, feeling like there is
something missing. On a normal day my mom would come into my room to wake me up but today I only had
my alarm. I get dressed and go down stairs to see that no one else is awake. I make myself some breakfast and sit
out on the porch to see the blue waters a bit dimmer than before. When all of my friends actually wake up, we
all go up to the city side.
10/28/2058
We arrive and see a huge screen with the governor’s face on it. He tells us that we have to be
disciplined and respect the bay and leave our city clean and how there will be checks every week. After his long
lecture, he mentions the fact that we are not to contact home for a while because the cell tower broke. I thought
that was weird because in all the years I lived in Shanghai, I had never heard of a broken cell tower. I was very
curious about what happened to make the cell tower fall, but I didn’t look into it.
11/13/2058
It has been a few weeks since the cell tower incident and everything has been going fine, except for the
fact that the tower was repaired a long time ago and they still don’t allow us to contact our parents. The first day
we got here the water was shimmering blue and now, after 3 weeks, it is turning darker and darker. It feels a bit
unsafe because recently a lot of lights have just been shutting down. My friends and I all think that there’s
something going on, so we’ve decided to try and go back to Shanghai and see what’s wrong, because the
government just kept on cutting off any contact with Shanghai or anywhere for that matter.
11/14/2058
Two hours after we were supposed to be asleep, we left our house last night and went to the train
station. Of course, there weren’t any trains. But we were too focused to think that they would not send a train
because no-one is supposed to leave. Michael came up with the idea to use the flying skateboards to go, and we
all went along with it. Almost three hours later, we arrived in mainland Shanghai, but of course there were
guards. We were so lucky that there was a late-night meeting for them. Catie, one of my friends, decided that
since they were going to the White House, we should follow them.
The White House was not far from the train station. One glimpse of Shanghai and it looked so dark.
There was burned down houses, no cars on the road and no people either. We walked pass this secluded fenced
up area, we heard so many voices that I decided I wanted to get closer to it. The closer I got, the louder the
voices got. I saw fire. It was a bonfire. I got even closer and saw my parents, held captive. I was stunned and tried